This is the French Mr. Debating Society. I'm John Bachelors, guys, and I'm a Roman citizen,

and it is 91 AD coming autumn, Londonium, the centurions retired and their families are

shopping, and I'm here with my good friend and fellow philosopher, Germanicus, looking

at the 21st century is exhausting. It's very confusing. Rome is a lot simpler, a lot,

a lot simpler. When we were challenged on the frontiers, we sent legions in, and sometimes

they were successful, sometimes they were enormously successful, and when we overran an enemy

camp, we pulled it apart, sold the men into slavery, and the women and children were sent

to other camps. That was the end. No negotiating. No, we'll be back. No, you broke your promises.

That was a simple world we ran for several hundred years. In the 21st century, they

played differently. However, it occurs to me because we're on the way to the theater,

and we have again tonight Greeks, and there was a reading from the Iliad last week that

I think they're going to continue. And I make the point to Germanicus, who is very sympathetic

to the Greeks. As I am not, my objection is their preachy. The Iliad is preachy, except

when you consider it, the Iliad is filled with romantic moments of face-offs between heroes.

The first, of course, is when there's an offer with the two armies pulled up against each

other. There's an offer to settle this, all at once, with Paris fighting Manolais. That

is the moment that every war experiences. The leader of my side and the meter of your side

will meet in the middle and will fight it out. Except what happens in the Iliad always happens.

The truth is broken. The losing side doesn't obey it. That's what happened in Iliad, and we've

seen it again. We see it in the Middle East. We see it in Ukraine. Always the same. 2,500 years

of this, maybe 3,000 years of the Iliad. I don't know. It's written down, but they speculate when.

In Germanicus, it's not a complaint, but it is an observation that the Greeks have given us a

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